[HN Gopher] An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
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An industry dedicated to making foods crispy
Author : sergeant3
Score : 77 points
Date : 2020-03-01 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bonappetit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bonappetit.com)
| TrumpMyGuns wrote:
| Slow news day.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| Food science is really interesting; I've kind of gotten into it
| as a hobby lately (having a background in chemical engineering
| and an obsessive interest in cooking). Last night I was making
| some melted cheese for nachos and used sodium citrate to emulsify
| the cheese sauce and sodium hexametaphosphate to sequester the
| calcium (weird aside: the non-numeric chemical formula for sodium
| citrate is NaCHO). It's fascinating to me how much work goes into
| this stuff. There are decades worth of research articles studying
| the effect of melting salts on cheese.
|
| Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that processed foods don't taste
| _dramatically_ better than restaurant food considering how much
| work goes into optimizing everything. I suppose a large part of
| this process is not strictly optimizing for flavor, but rather
| shelf life and cost among other factors. Although I do know a lot
| of Michelin star chefs will use whatever additives are necessary
| to make a dish taste as good as possible -- at least if they don
| 't have a strict focus on natural, locally sourced food.
| curuinor wrote:
| If you read the papers on palatants and food processes destined
| for animals, they'll increase consumption by 20, 30% easily.
|
| Check out this patent for a horse nugget, for example:
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/63/5b/ef/5e6b6bd...
|
| So if you take that and realize there's more money in palatants
| for humans than in animals, that'll explain an entire obesity
| epidemic entirely without any other explanations.
|
| But by dint of this fact, natural flavoring and proprietary
| crunchification processes and things like that are the thing
| which will not go away in the general movement against food
| additives. It's essential to the business.
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| <deleted because I realized I'm wrong and spreading
| misinformation, sorry everyone>
| csours wrote:
| I can eat like a King every day, and do less physical labor
| as well. Celebration foods have become everyday foods,
| especially in the United States.
|
| > "You'll need a LOT of data to support the general
| hypothesis that humans who eat 20% more of any food will get
| fat,"
|
| But that's just the thing, theoretically I could choose to
| eat any number of healthy things, but guess what I think
| about when I get hungry?
| [deleted]
| marmaduke wrote:
| To be fair the best French baguettes are crunchy and soft at
| the same time and have only water, flour, salt, sugar? and
| yeast, so nothing much to be afraid of there.
| GuiA wrote:
| And they require an immense amount of skill to make, which
| means you can only find really good bread in communities
| where a baker artisan can run a sustainable business. In the
| age of home grocery delivery, it's an uphill battle.
|
| The number of bakers in France has steadily gone down over
| the past half century or so. It's been going up a bit
| recently due to the new phenomenon of upper class white
| collar workers who quit their job in their 30s to find
| meaning in their life to do something more "noble" like
| baking, but it remains to be seen what the long term impact
| of this will be.
|
| You can manufacture Twix and Cheetos at scale, but not
| baguettes.
| sjf wrote:
| I disagree, since the 90s in Ireland every convenience
| store big enough to have a deli counter has been selling
| Cuisine de France baguettes. Usually as the popular
| breakfast roll or chicken fillet roll. They are mass
| produced and crispy, they are cooked in store by staff with
| no special training.
| brians wrote:
| What makes you think they have only those five
| ingredients? I'd bet on more gluten, malt, potato starch,
| a couple exotic salts, and more.
| BigBubbleButt wrote:
| https://www.innit.com/nutrition/cuisine-de-france-demi-
| bague...
|
| It uses enriched flour (which I doubt makes much
| difference), but also adds conditioner which really is
| the culprit of being engineered for mass production.
| Kuinox wrote:
| I didn't saw yet a single industrial baguette that was
| better than what my local baker does.
|
| Industrial one may be crispy but have nothing like a good
| one.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Same in Germany. The small bakeries are dying. But at least
| in Germany and France even the supermarket bread is way
| ahead of most even the fanciest US bread.
| user5994461 wrote:
| It's funny you'd say that, one of the thing that has been
| killing bakeries for the past 5 years is the broad adoption
| of bread making appliances. Small home appliances where you
| poor the ingredients, mostly half of water and half of
| flour, then it does the whole mixing and cooking by itself
| in a few hours. The bread always comes out warm and
| perfect. Making bread has never been easier.
|
| top sellers on amazon France:
| https://www.amazon.fr/gp/bestsellers/kitchen/57878031
| GuiA wrote:
| For a family that eats a lot of bread it's certainly a
| functional option, but the bread that comes out of it is
| pretty bland texture wise.
| wisty wrote:
| Baguettes are not really healthier than chips. The same can
| be said for sushi (well sushi got some other stuff that's
| good for you, but let's just think weight loss). They're
| mostly just carbs.
|
| If Americans had sushi and baguettes they wouldn't be slim
| like the French and Japanese, they'd eat sushi till they are
| 110% full (the Japanese aim to not stuff themselves at meals)
| and then carry around a bag of baguettes for in-between
| grazing (the French prefer set meals).
|
| They'd also blame everything on their delicious national
| cuisine, rather than on themselves.
| ip26 wrote:
| Here's an interesting take I heard recently- in addition to
| the move to white flour, some also suspect the move away
| from slow, natural leavening (sourdough) to fast,
| industrial leavening (instant yeast) has contributed to
| making bread less healthy. In support of that claim, notice
| the low glycemic index of sourdough bread.
| porknubbins wrote:
| You have to skip over a lot of chemistry to say baguettes
| are the same as chips. I'm not convinced food is all about
| macronutrients. I think frying things in hot oil has been
| shown to generate some potentially harmful substances
| though Im sure the jury is still out on how much you'd have
| to eat to be dangerous.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > So if you take that and realize there's more money in
| palatants for humans than in animals, that'll explain an entire
| obesity epidemic entirely without any other explanations.
|
| Well, that's what you get when the economy's health is measured
| by broad and sweeping measures like GDP. In the current
| American economy, the fries company makes 20% more, the doctor
| treating the obese person eating too many fries or the surgeon
| doing their lap band surgery gets paid, and a lot of insurance
| companies and middlemen make money. So everything is happening
| as planned.
|
| Without socialized healthcare, there is no incentive for food
| manufacturers to make their foods _not_ addictive. I wonder if
| there will ever be regulation regarding this as there is for
| alcohol and cigarettes. Mandatory calorie counts on fast food
| menus and such are barely scraping the surface.
| njarboe wrote:
| I agree the government trying to optimize to increasing GDP
| is not great for society, but it does also optimize for
| maximum tax revenue increase, so I understand why its done.
|
| I don't see any reason why one needs to socialize healthcare
| in order to regulate foodstuffs. Food manufacturers are going
| to make their foods stuffs addictive if people buy them more
| because of that, not whether a country has socialized
| medicine. One might even argue that people have less
| incentive to work on being healthy when their healthcare is
| paid by someone else.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| How does socialized healthcare change food manuf incentives?
|
| I do also wonder about where it makes sense to draw the line
| when it comes to nutrition policy. We all share finite
| healthcare resources, especially as it becomes more
| socialized.
|
| I think at the very least it becomes even more obviously
| predatory for you to make money off peddling addictive junk
| food to the masses. I would start there when thinking of
| helpful policy. Though things get ethically questionable very
| quickly.
|
| Might be more helpful to look into why 7/11 in Japan is full
| of so much healthy food compared to 7/11 in USA where you're
| lucky to find a shrink-wrapped apple, and what kind of
| cultural shift is needed to bring about that change. I feel
| like that difference summarizes why we are so screwed. We've
| lost the plot somewhere along the line.
| adventured wrote:
| It doesn't change much in fact. That's why several
| prominent socialized healthcare nations are extremely obese
| just like the US.
|
| That includes: Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New
| Zealand, Greece, Israel.
|
| All have adult obesity levels around or over 25%.
| Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain are among the most
| obese nations on the planet - despite having world-class
| socialized healthcare systems.
|
| When it comes to adult obesity among major nations (ie not
| Tuvalu or Tonga), New Zealand is #11, Canada is #13,
| Australia is #14, Britain is #20.
|
| The only way you can really control that as the parent was
| trying to imply, is through direct government control of
| all food consumption and production.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. "Crispiness is a stimulant to active eating; it appears to
| hold a particular place in the basic psychology of appetite and
| hunger satiation, spurring one to continue eating."
|
| And that's how the food industry turned America into a nation
| of oinkers. Even modest convenience stores now have _entire
| aisles_ of chips.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Whenever I visit the US I always have this feeling that most food
| is mushy. It's almost made to be easy to swallow with lowest
| effort.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Where are you from, for comparison? The stereotypical cuisine
| from most nations I can think of is "mushy", from Indian curry
| dishes to noodle dishes to breads/pastas to beans/legumes to
| basically anything that's carb heavy.
|
| Off the top of my head, the only "non-mushy" cuisine I can
| think of might be a meat heavy one and maybe an uncooked
| vegetable one. The former definitely describing my upbringing
| in Texas. Felt like I grew up on beef and mustard greens.
| markbnj wrote:
| > That's a mural I saw in the Frito-Lay headquarters in Plano,
| Texas. I was there! My pilgrimage to the pinnacle of potato
| chips!
|
| Oh I think not... for that you would need to visit Nottingham, PA
| ;). https://www.herrs.com/visit-us/
| gsk22 wrote:
| Frito Lay vs some company no one's ever heard of? I'd say the
| original statement stands :)
| markbnj wrote:
| It certainly stands if you base the decision on volume
| anyway. And millions of people have heard of Herr's. I can
| only empathize with those who haven't.
| drenginian wrote:
| The three most delicious flavors are sweet, salt and crunch.
| userbinator wrote:
| For Asians, replace salt with umami:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Spice/heat >>> sweet. And I have never heard anyone refer to
| crunch as a flavor.
| fbelzile wrote:
| NPR's Planet Money podcast did an episode last Oct related to
| this [0]. It was pretty cool to hear how the rise in food
| delivery services (drive-throughs before that) created an entire
| industry for engineered cooking oil that helped keep fries
| crispier, longer.
|
| They also have an expert project how we'll likely have delivery
| vehicles in the future with deep fryers built in.
|
| [0]
| https://www.npr.org/2019/10/23/772775254/episode-946-fries-o...
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _They also have an expert project how we 'll likely have
| delivery vehicles in the future with deep fryers built in._
|
| Ah, like Zume for french fries! In fact this would give
| something for Zume to do with their robotic pizza delivery
| trucks. Just replace the ovens with deep fryers.
|
| And if Zume doesn't pick up on this, Softbank Vision Fund will
| be sure to invest.
| xbryanx wrote:
| One of my favorite(only?) bits of sci-fi/food-engineering trivia
| is that Gene Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun) was the mechanical
| engineer who developed the machine that cooked the first Pringles
| chips:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pringles#History
| brians wrote:
| And EE "Doc" Smith of the Lensmen invented tech critical to
| Krispy Kreme.
|
| Food science is important work--it took a LOT of attention
| relative to comms in the first half of XXc.
| spectramax wrote:
| When I was in college, I had a roomate who interned at Frito Lay.
| We got a lot of "beta" samples of new stacks that weren't public
| - the amount of engineering that goes into making snacks on ultra
| high volume scale is insane. I tested a bunch of snacks and
| provided feedback - which goes back into the engineering
| iteration loop before the snack is perfected, optimized for cost
| and manufacturability. It was indeed fascinating. There are
| hundreds of parameters to optimize - for e.g. the shape of the
| chip can affect how much oil it can retain affecting cost, taste,
| nutrition, etc.
| [deleted]
| choxi wrote:
| I've been oddly interested in this topic ever since I read
| about the process of making the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco.
| Would you happen to know a good way to learn more about food
| engineering?
| jbay808 wrote:
| I know that these things are optimized like crazy, but I often
| feel like the focus groups must just not include people like
| me. Most of the processed food industry makes foods that I find
| sickly sweet or absurdly oily, among other issues. Soda for
| example.
|
| I wouldn't describe as a failing of the Coca-cola company the
| fact that I don't like coke. Everyone has preferences. I would
| describe as their utter failure the fact that the first time I
| enjoyed drinking a cola since age 10 was when I had an
| unsweetened cola-flavoured La Croix.
|
| For the longest time I didn't understand why vending machines
| exist, until I went to Japan and noticed I was always within
| arm's reach of a refreshingly bitter tea.
|
| I had always mentally equated that bottled drink == headache-
| inducing sugar rush and it necessarily had to be that way. Even
| when they made a sugar free drink, they just loaded it with
| other sweeteners.
|
| But that was really just an optimization process gone wrong and
| gotten trapped in a local minimum, I guess. I hope they're
| starting to learn their lesson.
| spectramax wrote:
| I don't like Frito Lay snacks as much as I don't like local
| gourmet snacks made by some hipster company. They are both
| bad for you unless you moderate consumption.
|
| That is orthagonal to the engineering that goes into making
| millions of chips a day. Just because I don't enjoy going on
| Royal Carribean cruises doesn't mean I shouldn't appreciate
| the logistical miracle that goes behind the scenes to make
| 12,000 meals a day. Nor does it diminish the engineering
| miracles that went into making this huge city in the middle
| of the ocean where you can hang out and have a martini while
| playing casino. Not my thing but amazing nevertheless.
|
| Ever looked at Cigarette manufacturing line? I have. And it
| is insane! 10,000 cigarettes a minute. My jaw was on the
| floor. Deeply immoral business but I think that's orthagonal.
| chime wrote:
| > but I often feel like the focus groups must just not
| include people like me.
|
| I'm sure they do. That's why they came out with the baked
| chips, hundreds of non-sugar diet drinks (e.g. slightly
| flavored 0 calorie water). We all eat. We all get addicted.
| They just need to find your poison and optimize it.
|
| > I hope they're starting to learn their lesson.
|
| As this article shows, they've got an entire industry to
| learning every possible lesson.
| jbay808 wrote:
| The slightly flavoured water is a very new development --
| the la croix I mentioned. When I had it, I thought for
| once, they've finally found something I like. But why did
| it take so long?
| dasil003 wrote:
| La Croix was founded almost 40 years ago, I remember
| drinking it (not very enthusiastically) as a kid growing
| up in the 80s.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Oh what?? Wow, I'm quite surprised. Were they making the
| same sort of product back then?
|
| Maybe it just took them a long time to spread to Canada.
| ChickeNES wrote:
| It's funny you should mention Canada:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearly_Canadian
| mntmoss wrote:
| They can identify the market but not have the right way
| of reaching it. Two of the biggest changes in the past
| few decades:
|
| 1. Everything can be shipped online, so niche targets
| have more options. I have a memory of craving Yoo-Hoo in
| college, in the mid-2000's and seeing no local outlet for
| it, and therefore I went on Amazon and purchased six
| boxes of the stuff. I got what I wanted, although by the
| time I was done with those six boxes, I was very much
| over Yoo-Hoo.
|
| 2. The move towards stocked-fridge offices as seen in
| every SV tech campus, which make more of these items a
| B2B purchase, and therefore incentivize developing and
| marketing products on the basis of productivity-enhancing
| qualities. In the not so distant past it was more common
| for a campus cafeteria to be relatively modest, putting
| things in the hands of the culture more generally...
|
| ...and there is evidence for a "big sugar" industry
| conspiracy in the late 20th century pinning the blame for
| heart disease on high-fat diets, and therefore shifting
| the culture for a whole generation, but primarily in
| North America. Other countries did not have the same
| kinds of trends. And since that marketing position has
| gradually decayed they are forced to start selling water
| minus the sugar, indeed they anticipated that happening
| when they started bringing out diet sodas in the 80's.
| francoisdevlin wrote:
| It sounds like your tastes are an outlier, and didn't
| present a good ROI
| jbay808 wrote:
| My impression is that the totally-unsweetened carbonated
| water market has exploded in the last 5 years...
| frandroid wrote:
| The prose in this article is as crispy as the chips they
| describe... Some sort of crispception.
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